Book Review: Mandie and the Invisible Troublemaker

Quote: “I have a great idea, Uncle John. Why don’t you just buy my school.”

Although the Mandie Books were published by a Christian publisher, and although Mandie is being brought up a Christian who recites a Bible verse for courage and prays for President McKinley, Volume 24 is not exactly what parents think of as a Sunday School book. Mandie goes to a small, pathetic “private school” run by two old women, sisters; the sister responsible for their finances is stressed and irritable, and refuses to listen to Mandie’s truthful explanations of how the messes into which Mandie stumbles came to happen. Mandie happens to overhear the sisters talking and realize that although they can’t afford to expel Mandie, the sisters think it best to make Mandie think they’re going to expel her. She calls their bluff, threatens to leave the school, and decides it’s all right for her to break school rules on purpose since she’s being blamed for someone else’s misdeeds anyway.

At the same time, Mandie is doing what is, for a thirteen-year-old, a noble thing. Most of the girls at her school don’t interest her, although she claims to think of them as friends. Three of them she particularly dislikes. She’s sure that one of her three school enemies is taking papers to her room and tucking open jars of molasses into her bag, just to cause trouble for her. She enlists her school friend Celia to help her find out for sure before she accuses one of them. The mystery isn’t made very easy to guess, and Mandie’s self-control pays off when she finally sees the invisible troublemaker.

Still, her disrespect for the teacher is rebuked but not really repented of—and her heroic refusal to make accusations that might be mistaken is not rewarded by others, either. This is another Mandie Book that definitely reads more like a memory shared by someone who really was in school in 1901 than like a typical moralizing Sunday School story.

Though Lois Gladys Leppard no longer needs a dollar, and I still have to charge the minimum of $5 per book + $5 per package, almost any Fair Trade book would fit comfortably into the package along with this pocket-sized book. Or you could complete your collection with twelve different Mandie Books, which would (probably) cost $65. Payments may be sent to either address in the lower left-hand corner of the page.